Examples (English)

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With the emancipation of women and the invention of contraceptives and tampons and disposable nappies the number of children in Europe went down, but the number of toys and nurseries and slides and climbing frames and dogs and hamsters etc. went up. Sociologists said that the child had become the focal point of the family and gradually the family’s most influential element. Then children wanted independence and their own identity and refused to wear hand-me-down caps or shoes and kept demanding new caps and shoes and crayons and building bricks and teddy-bears and dolls. In the twentieth century, European countries produced twelve and a half thousand times more dolls than in the nineteenth century, and instead of wood or sawdust they were made of plastics, and with the passage of time they learned to gurgle and speak and become more and more independent, saying things like Good morning or Bon appétit, and some learned to cry and burp after meals or sing snatches of arias. The most famous doll was called Barbie and she was first manufactured in 1959. She was one foot tall, had large breasts and hips and a slim waist and was the first doll to behave like an adult. She, too, soon learned to speak and say I’ve got a date with my boyfriend tonight and What shall I wear to the ball? And Will you come with me to buy a dress? At first she was dressed as a ballet-dancer or actress or model, later as an air stewardess, teacher, vet, businesswoman, astronaut or presidential candidate. And in 1986 she appeared in the striped uniform of the concentration camps with a striped cap. Various ex-p.o.w. associations protested and said that it was an insult to the suffering and memory of the victims, but the makers maintained in their defence that, on the contrary, it was a good way to acquaint the young with the suffering in the concentration camps and that little girls who bought the doll in the striped uniform would identify with it and later, when they grew up, understand more readily what that suffering had been. And in 1998 the Germans had the idea of erecting in Berlin a huge memorial to the victims of the holocaust that would be visible from a distance, because besides celebrating the positive events in history, monuments can also serve as a warning to future generations. Some people believed that an art object was inappropriate as a means to express the holocaust, because the holocaust was so far removed from all the rules of aesthetics, while others judged that the ideal project would be one that would express that the holocaust defies expression. And four hundred and ninety-five artists sent in various designs to express a warning to future generations, and one suggested making a huge, eight-coloured six-point star revolving on its axis, and another suggested constructing a vast Ferris wheel which instead of cabins would have trucks from the concentration camps, and another suggested building a large bus station with red buses and timetables where the destinations would be concentration camps, and another suggested erecting thirty-nine steel pillars on which Why? would be written in various languages: Warum?, Waarom?, Varfor?, Proč?, Pourquoi?, Perché?, Dlaczego?, Cur?, Kuidas?, Miksi?, Miért?, Zakaj?, Kodel?, Hvorfor?, Jiatí?, Pse?, Nicin? etc. Some thought that any memorial should be dedicated not only to victims of the holocaust, but to the victims of all manner of genocides, because only that way would it encapsulate the living memory of history, since otherwise it would be just a mass of steel or iron that after a few decades would have little to say to anyone. And certain historians said that building monuments was a questionable activity anyway, because preserving the memory of a particular event offered no guarantee at all that the event would not be repeated, and they cited examples where the preservation of memories had led to new conflicts and wars.